At 40 years old, Orel Hershiser clearly isn’t what he once was. He’s no longer a complete-game workhorse, or No. 1 ace. But while the Mets’ newest starter didn’t have his best control yesterday, he still had his stuff and his smarts – and that was enough to battle his way to a 9-4 win over the Giants, his old club.

“Battle? It was a war,” Hershiser (2-2) chuckled ruefully of his six-inning, two-run struggle. “I stunk. It was typical Hershiser this season. Good stuff, no control. I could just as easily be sitting here doing losing interviews and telling you how bad I was. It was definitely a gift for me to find some key pitches, and maybe San Francisco let me off the hook.”

The Giants clearly had their hooks in their former starter, who allowed a baserunner in all but his final frame. He gave up two runs in the second inning, and in a rocky fourth he hit Rich Aurilia and walked Giant starter Chris Brock on four pitches with one out. But he came back to fan Marvin Benard with a hard-biting slider, and induced Armando Rios into a inning-ending groundout.

“You know what happens sometimes as a veteran, you go through your checklist of things you’ve tried and then you get to the end and you go, “Well, I guess I’ll just throw it.’ I figured it couldn’t get any worse,” Hershiser said.

But Bobby Valentine knew it would get better.

“He rises out of adversity to get out of a jam,” Valentine said.And there was Hershiser again in the sixth, re-inventing himself on the mound after 15 seasons in the bigs. After struggling from the windup, he pitched an entire inning from the stretch for the first time in his career. The results? His only 1-2-3 inning of the day.

“It was a matter of giving in to the fact that the windup was brutal,” Hershiser said. “I had a few team meetings with myself out there. When I just relaxed and slowed down, good things started to happen.”